


His Name Is John Watson

by ampersand_ch



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Bees, Desire, Explicit Sexual Content, Horses, M/M, Murder, Police, Romance, Summer, Sussex, Thunder and Lightning, Vacation, country life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 05:21:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7346824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ampersand_ch/pseuds/ampersand_ch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A summer's idyll in Sussex. Holmes and Watson seek some peace and quiet. But that's not as simple as they imagine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fish Pond

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SwissMiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwissMiss/gifts).
  * A translation of [Sein Name ist John Watson](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7336528) by [ampersand_ch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ampersand_ch/pseuds/ampersand_ch). 



> Thank you very much, SwissMiss, for your translation!  
> I love your beautiful figurative and poetic English you have given my story.  
> Thanks!

I am fascinated by the way he lies there. So relaxed. He has his arms extended upward and to the sides of his head, like an infant. His legs are slightly splayed, his crotch exposed. All four limbs spread out. He lies in the grass beneath an oak tree, asleep. A smile on his face. I envy him that. The basic trust that allows him to doze so devotedly. There is a certain peacefulness about him. A confident serenity, coexistent with a natural, instinctive attentiveness. He would awaken at the slightest intrusion. He is possessed of an internal awareness. For example, when I toss one of the acorns that are scattered about. It lands in the grass approximately ten feet away from him, putting him on alert even if he shows no outward sign. Not so much as a twitch of an eyelash. Not even when I approach and settle myself beside him in the grass. His lashes are blond and unassuming at first glance. They are longer than they appear, however, and assume a silky sheen when the sunlight falls upon them. They shimmer and gleam as if an elf had strewn gold dust over them. Good Lord, where have these thoughts come from? Have I sunk so low as to conceive of elves?

Perhaps he senses my short-lived shock at my own daydreams; or perhaps it is merely my gaze lingering – for far too long – on his face. I delight in the faint curl of his lips, the smile that forms because he has become aware of me and no longer wishes to conceal it. His eyes open lazily, he turns his head and looks at me. A profound tranquility in the grey.

"Holmes," says he. "Have you found the bees?"

Yes, I have. A longish hole in the trunk of an old spruce, through which the creatures fly in and out. I extracted a single specimen from the entry and examined it. They are not wild bees. They are ours. Tame to the hand. Swarmed out from one of our colonies. They have already re-settled. The queen has mated. We shall leave them be. Allow them to return to nature.

"We'll let them go wild," I state.

"As you wish."

It does not appear to concern him any further. He closes his eyes once again, stretches contentedly, folds his hands behind his head. He has removed his waistcoat, made himself comfortable. His shirt is open, exposing a section of his bare chest. The blond hairs there. The summer sunshine filters through the leaves of the oak tree, splashing a play of light across his skin. The air smells spicy out here, like grass and greenery. Admixed with the scent of the countless flowers scattered over the meadow in a colourful spray. It is filled with chirrups and buzzing, rustles and hums. The white umbels of the cow parsley, _Anthriscus sylvestris_ , are besieged by common blues, _Polyommatus icarus_ , a member of the _Lycaenidae_ family, the most common butterfly in Western Europe. A tumultuous mating game. So much life. So much free, unrestrained life, caught up as it were in a dream. 

All of my knowledge is useless in the face of such an abundance of emotion. None of the categories, models and methods can explain this beauty. This momentary enchantment. Nor can they explain what this man means to me who lies beside me in the grass, spread out, from whom I cannot avert my gaze. My gaze, which probes its way across his body, under his shirt. His chest is firm and powerful. I know how it feels. The thin strip of hair that gathers beneath his navel, gradually merging into the darker pubic hair. I know every part of him. As he does of me. We know each other well. Too well. Much better than is seemly for two men. Even if they are the closest of friends.

There are things I cannot conceal from him. The fact that I am sitting beside him in the warm grass, watching him, as the fingers of my left hand absently pluck at the blades and my thoughts wander uncontrollably down sinful paths. The fact that the mere sight of him, together with my thoughts, suffices to cause my prick to swell. He opens his eyes and looks at me.

"I'm going swimming," I announce.

He nods. I am sweaty from walking in the noonday sun. I was following the bees which were attending the blossoms on this meadow in unusually dense numbers. I followed them quite a distance, over the meadow and across the stream, through the adjacent barley field, all the way to the copse and the spruce tree with the elongated hole. And back again. My shirt is sticking to my skin. I can feel the friction of my trousers between my legs as I stand.

The fish pond is situated in the midst of old silver willow trees, which stand out clearly against the glittering summer sky to the south-west. I walk along the edge of the field, likewise summer barley. The stalks are already bowed with the weight of the ripening grain, the first hints of yellow appearing on the green surfaces. The long beards catch in my skin as I run my hand through them. As if they want to hold me back. Keep me here. Make me stop. The ground is hard and dry beneath my feet. The midday sun burns on my head. It isn't far. A couple minutes' walk. Chirrups, whirs, and hums around me. The crows are quarrelling with a heron in the trees by the pond. The larger bird takes off, flying out into the fields.

The fish pond is fed by an underground source. It is clear and cool. Old Dugan, who owns the property, set out trout many years ago. They keep the pond clean of other vermin. We sometimes bathe here, Watson and I, when we are in Sussex. We would like to move here at some point, when we are older. I have purchased the cottage at which we put up, and lease it out to Matt Walton and his wife to manage. He also tends to the bees.

My trousers chafe against my prick as I walk. I am perspiring. And my thoughts refuse to be recalled from the landscapes through which they wander. It is John. It is always John. Ever since we have allowed what the law does not, my body has demanded its right, and my mind is slow to remonstrance. Especially not out here, in the midst of such a profusion of sensuality. I set my hopes on the cooling effects of the water. Knowing at the same time that I am deceiving myself. I set my hopes on John. That he will follow me to the hidden, shadowy places beneath the willows. This is what it has come to. My mind resigns itself to the ungovernable drives of my body.

We bathed at this spot before, a year ago, when we were yet friends. No more than friends. A shallow ingress to the water between two willow trees. I lean against one of them and peer out at the surface of the water, upon which the surroundings are reflected. It is completely still. Water striders are the only thing rushing across the surface, and gnats dance in the sunlight that has found its way through the willows' foliage. 

I disrobe, draping my clothes over a branch. The waistcoat I have carried with me. My shoes and stockings. The heavy trousers which stick to me, the damp shirt, the drawers. There are pebbles under my feet as I slowly enter the water, scoop the cool wetness up in my hands to pour it over my hot body. The pond deepens abruptly. I dive in. Dive under. Resurface. Glance back at the two trees. John is not here yet. I wait for him. My body refuses to be cooled. The tug in my groin does not desist. It worsens when I think of him coming.

I swim a few strokes. Not many. The pond is small. A couple of strokes this way, a couple more in the opposite direction. I try to distract myself, forbid my hand from reaching for my cockstand. The impatience is difficult to master. I will wait for him.

When I look to the willows the second time, he is there. John Watson. He stands, legs akimbo, on the bank between the two trees, watching me. I move toward him through the water, climb out of the pond. He will see the state of my body, but I do not care. He should see it. He should know it and sense how greatly I desire him. 

He startles when he spots me in the shallow water, hastily grabs my clothes from the branch of the willow tree and holds them out to me. But I do not intend to cover myself. I grasp him by his open shirt, press him back against the trunk with my dripping body, just for a moment, kiss him fiercely and then release him, gaze into his grey eyes, my body still flush with his. Breathless.

But he pushes me away. Roughly. Thrusts the clothes into my chest with his fist.

"We're not alone here, Holmes," he whispers, practically panicked. "Go back into the water or cover yourself. They'll be here any moment."

It is then that I hear the snorting of a horse.

"Who?" I inquire, taking my clothes.

"The local constabulary. They're looking for you, hopeful of your assistance."

Two mounted men in uniform appear beside the pond, embarrassed when they see my state of undress, my modesty hastily concealed by the clothes I hold in my hand.

"Give Mr Holmes a moment to dress," Watson appeals to the two men.

They nod, withdraw a short distance and turn their backs. They speak to each other, although I cannot understand them, and chuckle softly. I quickly pull on my clothes beneath Watson's unabashed eye. He holds the rest of the items for me, handing me one at a time. I tug the clammy material over my wet skin. Watson stands directly beside me. The lust has receded, for the most part. I can still sense John breathing at my side, more heavily than usual. I can also smell his readiness and curse all the fates and police officers of this world.

Inspector Schofield and Constable Hartley of the Sussex Constabulary are in need of our assistance. The corpse of a farmer's wife has been pulled out of a cesspool in the next village. As she sported a large wound to the head, the police presume it was no accident.

"I can lend you my horse," the Constable offers.

I do not wish to ride. I hate riding. But it will take too long for us to reach the scene on foot. Watson coaxes me. The creature is a large, powerful mare with a long back; she will be able to bear us both to the village. 

The Constable slides the saddle forward and helps John to mount. I allow myself to be hoisted up behind the saddle and cling fast to John. The Inspector rides ahead. The Constable walks at the rear. He will arrive at the scene somewhat later. 

It is tolerable. The mare moves with a calm assurance. She is quite stable, even at a light trot. She snorts and froths under the doubled burden on her back. The sun beats down on us. I feel John's heat in my body. We stick to each other. I bury my face in his nape, breathe in the sweat from his skin and struggle with the lust that threatenes anew to descend upon me.


	2. The Body

The scene of the crime is in disarray. Everything is full of slurry, water, filth, and footprints. The cesspool has been covered up again with old, solid oaken boards so that no one falls in. The corpse has been dragged out of the pit, rinsed off with water and brought into the cool underground cheese cellar of the nearby dairy. It lies there, wrapped in a sheet, upon a rough wooden table. The place smells of damp and the tang of the cheese ripening on wooden shelves in the rear part of the room. A bucket holds a sharply bitter-smelling herbal brew with which the cheese is wiped down daily. A greasy rag hangs over the lip of the bucket, and I make a mental note not to consume any of the local cheese. At any rate, the stench overpowers the smell of the liquid manure still clinging to the corpse. As well as the faintly tangible, sweetish scent of the initial stages of rot.

Inspector Schofield is not the only one who accompanies us into the cellar. The priest comes along with the cheesemaker, his wife, and three dirty children grasping their mother's apron and peeping out from behind her back with undisguised curiosity. The cheesemaker gives loud and public vent to his displeasure at the body having been deposited in his cellar. The farmers will be bringing their milk in a couple of hours, he says. It must be gone by then.

"Calm yourself, my good man," says Inspector Schofield. "The undertaker will take her away as soon as the Doctor has examined her."

Watson does not hesitate long. He folds back the sheet. The head wound is large, deep, and ugly. The cheesemaker's wife emits a shocked sound and one of the children begins to cry.

"Get out!" I command. They are getting on my nerves. All of them. Except Watson. "Out! Now! All of you! You too!"

The cheesemaker looks at me, startled, when I bark at him.

"And you, Inspector!"

Schofield is clearly taken aback and wants to say something, but I forestall him: "We need quiet. You are in the way."

He nods unhappily but leaves, pushing the cursing cheesemaker before him up the worn stone stairs. The priest, wife, and children have already fled. I close the heavy oaken door behind them. The cheesemaker's curses are audible on the other side, and then all is still. John has wordlessly examined the body in the meantime. He looks up now, something like amusement in his grey eyes.

"Thank you, Holmes," he says gently. Only to follow in the next moment with: "I need more light."

It is dim and gloomy in the cellar, now that the door is closed. A bit of daylight filters in through two ventilation shafts, but it is insufficient. Watson indicates an oil lamp standing on the wooden bench by the wall. It is so filthy and smeared with grease that I shudder to touch it. Nevertheless, I do so, removing the glass to turn up the wick and light it with the grubby matches that lie beside the lamp. 

The illumination is poor. I try to focus it, find a tin for the purpose. I use it as a slatted shade, go over to Watson and direct the light onto his hands. The Doctor smiles as the beam lands upon the wound. He does not look up, but it is an acknowledgment. It feels good, even if it is an admittedly trivial occupation to focus the light. His regard warms my heart. I cannot deny it. I am enamoured of his smile. Good Lord, what has happened to me! His smile is of greater fascination to me than a murder victim.

"A sharp, metallic object," Watson opines. "A hoe or similar agricultural implement. More than likely the cause of death. She has been dead for at least twenty hours, and lay in the cess pit for approximately the same length of time."

"Was she already dead when she was tossed in?"

"I believe so. I would have to look at her lungs in order to be absolutely certain."

Watson casts about for some tool with which to open the body. He is utterly unfazed by such matters. I, however, have no particular desire to perform an autopsy in a stinking cheese cellar.

"Leave it, Doctor. It is irrelevant. She is dead. Dead is dead. And the wound looks lethal."

"Agreed," Watson says as he frees the body of clothing and examines the legs, arms and hands.

There are very faint drag marks on the legs. Nothing else. There was no struggle. The position of the wound indicates that she was struck from behind. She was a solidly built young woman. She cannot have been dragged very far.There must still be traces of blood somewhere. Clues. Somewhere outside, most likely very close to the pit.

We leave the cellar a few minutes later. The cheesemaker's wife brings lye soap and boiling water upon the Doctor's request. Watson washes his hands and arms as I relate to the Inspector what we know.

I find blood on the wall of the wooden barn at the scene of the crime, directly adjacent to the cess pit. The woman must have fallen against the door following the blow. There are countless footprints on the hard-packed, dusty dry floor of the barn. Too many. People trampled around indiscriminately after finding the body. Nothing to be done. The woman's family is in shock. The husband has had a nervous breakdown, is unable to be questioned. His wife is laid in state in the living room. His sister, who lives in the neighbouring village, has taken the children with her for the time being.

*****

When we finally return to our cottage that evening, I am exhausted. Far more from everyone's hue and cry than from the exertions of the day. I do not endure people well. They tire me. Especially in large numbers. Watson does better in that regard. Nonetheless: he looks tired too. We are dirty and stink most horribly of horse, sweat, and shit. It is nigh nine o'clock, yet it is still light and warm outside. I decide the first order of business is to wash at the well behind the house, and Watson joins me. 

Mrs Walton is an easy-going woman, and her husband has gone to help another farmer, a friend of his, with shearing the sheep. He will not be home any time soon. There are no children we might startle. Mrs Walton brings us curd soap, a scrub brush, towels, and a bucket with which we can haul the water. 

Watson finds it immodest to wash at the well in the nude, but I only want one thing: to get out of these filthy, stinking clothes. I peel them off my body and toss them in a heap. Mrs Walton has promised to wash them. We are shielded here behind the house. The cottage is outside the village proper, and is surrounded by hedgerows. John allows himself to be convinced. 

He scrubs my back with the soap and the soft brush. I am certain that Mrs Walton is watching us from the kitchen window, and I turn my back to the house. John is standing perilously close behind me. I feel his body and hear his breath. He scrubs my back and shoulders, and I hear him panting lightly. He has the intention of addressing additional areas of my body with the soft brush; I can virtually feel in my own body how much of an effort it is for him not to do so. His soft laugh is impregnated with an arousal that not even he can suppress. My body has already reacted to it, and I catch myself yearning for the touch of his prick on my arse. That cannot be allowed to happen. 

I pull a bucketful of water out of the well, cold, clear ground water, and tip it over my head. John receives a good dousing as well, blusters and laughs. The water is cold, the soap smells of cleanliness and comfort. We joke around a bit, wash each other's hair, dump water over each other, making quite certain not to allow any inadvertent touches, and stand in such a way that the woman behind the kitchen window does not see anything shocking. Then we wrap ourselves in the towels Mrs Walton has laid out for us and climb up to the room under the eaves which we occupy when we are here. The Waltons live downstairs.

Mrs Walton has cooked, and I am hungry. John has been complaining for a while now that he wants to eat. And so we dress once more. Dusk has fallen when we come back down, freshly washed and correctly kitted out for dinner. We sit out in the garden, drink wine and eat the excellent stew. The air turns cooler. A light breeze comes up, blowing through the garden and the trees, rustling through the leaves and blossoms. 

Mrs Walton does not eat with us. She serves, then returns to the house. Her husband comes home eventually, we hear them talking. Then the house becomes dark and silent. We are still sitting out in the garden. We do not speak. The stillness of the night carries every word far out into the countryside, as well as through the open windows into the house.

John lays a warning finger across his lips and quietly gets up. We sneak out of the garden, along the narrow path beside the field, away from the house and the village. A dog barks somewhere, having heard us. John has brought the blanket Mrs Walton laid out over the rough wooden bench in order to protect our clothes.

We walk at a brisk pace, mute and firmly fixed on our goal, accompanied only by the chirping of the cicadas. The weak light from the waxing half-moon which hangs in the night sky enables us to maintain our bearings. I hear John's heavy breathing beside me in the quiet of the night. I smell him. The scent of his clothing mixed with soap and the emanations of his skin. It fairly drives me mad. This outing whose object is so obvious and sinful, whose goal causes me to tremble with desire and hunger. 

I reach for John, for his arm. His hand encloses mine, fierce and strong, and a hoarse sound escapes his throat. Both – his soft outburst and his body, quivering with arousal – combine to shred what remains of my senses. We had intended to go to the small copse ahead of us, but I pull Watson away from the path, into the barley field. We hastily spread out the blanket, and I fall upon him.

He has no chance. I know this. And yet I cannot help myself. We rut heedlessly against each other, grab between each other's legs, and it is all over within moments. I do not even free myself from my clothes. John's hands and my hunger suffice, even through the cloth. He spills down my throat less than a minute later. 

Afterwards, we lie beside each other, gazing into each other's eyes. John's grey eyes are deep and black. His breath brushes my mouth. I know that it is not enough for him when we come together this way. It is not enough for me either. John brought along the little pot of Vaseline, but our bodies were too greedy to allow us the time needed for that. And we do not have any place to take that time. Now that my body has ceased its demands, I feel a pain inside me, along with regret that we are always in such a rush. That we must constantly flee and adapt to circumstances. That we have attacked each other with our starved bodies in a barley field at night.

"Some day," I whisper as I run my fingertips over John's lips, "some day we shall live alone in the cottage and do there as we please."

"When, Sherlock?" John asks sadly. "When we are old and the flame of our vitality has extinguished?"


	3. The Interrogation

We are sober as we emerge from the barley field. My smalls are sticky with my seed. Watson gathers up the blanket. 

We stagger more than walk back to the cottage. In the garden, we lay the blanket back on the bench. We climb the stairs to our chamber, wash, put on our nightclothes and lie down to sleep. Our beds stand separate. John crawls into mine for a few minutes, holds me in his arms. There is nothing objectionable about it, now that the tension between us has ebbed. There is only a sadness and gnawing yearning which I sometimes suspect has nothing at all to do with Watson. I caress it in his hair with my fingers, kiss it secretly between his lips, cosy up to it with my body against his. 

These are the moments in which I doubt my own perception of nature and turn apostate from science, in which I mistrust every model and do not lend credence to any explanation. I suspect, in those fleeting seconds of somnolence, that I am experiencing what is vulgarly known as love. Love the likes of which should not be between men – and yet is. To my knowledge, there are no scientific measurements of this form of love; merely of the sexual love between a man and a woman that originates in the natural drive to reproduce. I do not know what happens to me when I lie in John's arms. But I cannot believe that it is nothing more than a few chemical processes in my body which release such deep emotions. I fear science is capable of illuminating much, but not our most basic, fundamental nature.

Somewhat later, the Doctor returns to his own bed. Mrs Walton cannot be allowed to find us together when she brings fresh washing-water into the room in the morning.

*****

When I awaken, morning is dawning. The Waltons are moving around downstairs. Matt Walton is on his way to the sheep shearing, a task for which the men pool their resources and are rewarded for their day's work with an abundance of food and drink. It is very early. The sun has not yet risen above the horizon. The birds are singing outside. An unbelievable muddle of voices and continuously repeating motifs. The clarity and volume of the songs always touches me, and I am amazed at how natural and powerful these small creatures' grasp of life is. So different from us humans.

Mrs Walton eventually comes in to put the fresh pitcher of water for ablutions on the commode. I hear John rise shortly after.

We meet downstairs at breakfast. John is already seated. Our eyes meet and linger, and then he smiles. His fingers brush my hand. There are moments when I am struck by how beautiful he is. His eyes. His lips. His hands. And how painfully compelled my heart is to be bound to him.

Constable Hartley fetches us in a two-horse buggy, and brings us to the neighbouring farm of the murder victim. He and the Inspector have assembled everyone who might know something. Another neighbour allows us the use of her sitting room for the interviews. There is a brisk coming and going between the two properties. The people come over to be questioned, then go back to the other house to say their good-byes and offer comfort. The husband's sister is there with the children; the husband is prepared to speak to us.

We start with the neighbour woman who was first at the scene. She says she did not notice anything suspicious either that day or the day before. It wasn't until the Waugh child peeked into the cesspool whilst looking for his cat and started screaming bloody murder that she rushed over and found the dead farmer's wife.

The victim was from a well-to-do family and moved to the village from Birmingham four years ago when she married. The young widower, James Waugh, whose first wife died while giving birth to their second child, had needed a mother for the children. It was no love match. She knew nothing of farming, but apparently quite a lot about horses, and had soon taken to attending the cattle market with the local men in an advisory capacity. That made her suspicious to the womenfolk. But then she had solicited guidance from the neighbour ladies, and under their direction had laid out quite the lovely garden, thus gaining herself a couple of friends. Still, she had never been popular in the village, even if it had spoken in her favour how lovingly she took on the children of her predecessor, how attentive she was in raising them. She herself had had no issue.

Money trouble? No. It was rumoured that she had brought a sizable dowry into the marriage. There was nothing to show for it, however. Aside from the roof of the house, which her husband had had re-shingled. Other than that, nothing had been changed either inside or outside the home.

"Can you exclude the possibility that it was a woman who struck down the farmer's wife?" I ask Watson after the neighbour has left the sitting room.

"No, Holmes, I cannot exclude that as a possibility," he replies thoughtfully. "I considered it as well. The deed must have been done in broad daylight. The females in these parts are strong from their hard work in the gardens and stables. And they are well versed in the use of the hoe and other implements."

"The victim must have known her killer. A stranger would have been noticed in the middle of the day. And she would not have let him into the barn and trustingly turned her back on him. I do believe, Watson, that we should seek the murderer amongst the local population."

"Good heavens, Holmes! Then we should proceed most carefully."

"Should we not always do so, my dear friend?"

The smile he bestows upon me is so affectionate and knowing that my heart becomes quite humid. 

James Waugh is the next to be questioned. He is pale, his answers garbled, his voice unsteady. It appears that he was given brandy and valerian in an attempt to help him get through the death of his second wife in six years. The dosage may have been slightly excessive.

"I was shearing sheep all day and came home late. The children were in bed when I got in. I thought the wife was already asleep," he says and starts to weep afresh, likely as he recalls that his wife had already been submerged in the cesspool for hours by that time.

I wait until he has calmed himself and dried his eyes with his handkerchief.

"You don't sleep in the same room as your wife?"

"No. She has her own room."

"And you noticed nothing that morning?"

"Indeed, I did. She didn't make breakfast. I left the house hungry. I thought she was still abed."

"You didn't go to check? Call for her?"

"No. The wife and I, we didn't exactly... look to each other. She did her part, I did mine."

"And the children?" Watson asks.

"The big one's ten, the wee one's six. They take care of themselves. I'm often out on the field fairly early and my wife off to market. They have to see to things themselves."

I want to look around the victim's house and speak with the children. Waugh takes us across to his place. It is nearly noon by now, and hot. The sun beats down on the narrow path. Waugh's gait is unsteady. Watson shores him up, hooks his arm through Waugh's to stabilise him. 

I don't like it when my Doctor touches other men. That is stupid, I know, as he does it all the time. He is a physician. And yet I feel an urge to touch him myself right now, to place my hand upon his shoulder, to gain his attention. It is nonsense. I do not succumb, wave the notion away. I walk behind the two of them. Watson's gait is loose and confident. The agile motion of his hips promptly awakens urges in me that are unwelcome at this time. I feel the blood flowing into my prick at the thought of myself and John alone in the cottage tonight. Mrs Walton is helping to cook for the sheep-shearers tonight. She won't be home until late, together with her husband.

The Waughs' house smells strongly of the herbs that have been burnt in the sitting room to drive away the flies and overpower the stench of decomposition. The priest has appointed the next morning for the burial. It's too hot to leave the body lying in state any longer. 

The Doctor and I climb the stairs to the upper storey while Waugh remains with the mourners below. We have his permission to search the three bedrooms and the little study.

I open the bureau drawers, peer into the cupboards and examine the articles of clothing lying about. The nursery, first on the list, is surprisingly neat. Next comes the farmer's room, and finally that of the deceased. All of the chambers are simply yet tastefully furnished and tidy.

"Holmes."

Watson has found several letters in a box under the bed, and opens them. I place my hand on his back and look over his shoulder as we both read. Correspondence with her sister in Birmingham. Trivialities of everyday life. At least at first glance.

"We should take the letters with us, they may shed some light on something or other," Watson says.

He smells very faintly of the tincture of sage he adds to the rinsing-water he uses when shaving. But he mostly smells of John, and his scent combines with the fragrance of the stationery, the warm aroma of the wood, and the intimate perfume of the stranger's bed to create an incredibly captivating ambrosia. I inhale deeply at his neck, absorbing the smell, close my eyes miserably. My nose has taken up John's scent. My mind stutters. My brain stalls. My prick reacts. John turns to me. As he does, my hand runs up his back to his nape. I hold him fast, not yielding, and he turns in my arms. His body brushes mine, and the heat shoots straight into my loins. We closed the door to the chamber behind us, shutting out the smoke and the noise of the crowd downstairs. We are alone in this room, which seems to be offering us a welcome enclosure.

"Holmes," Watson says, a soft warning.

But I am already kissing him in the next moment. I do not know what has got into me. My kisses are filled with urgent desire. John allows it for a heartbeat or two, groans softly, and I struggle stubbornly against the impulse to seize him by the crotch. Then Watson pushes me away, gently but firmly.

"Behave, Holmes," he whispers in admonishment.

I nod. I know. My God, what am I doing! I am beyond hope. I move away from Watson, lean back against the wooden cupboard and try to calm down. This cannot be. Such things cannot be allowed to happen. I am not in control. I need to take countermeasures. I am endangering both the Doctor and myself with such intemperate actions.

John is leaning against the wall next to the window, likewise struggling for control. It takes all of my considerable mental power to re-order my thoughts. The problem is that it has begun again already, my body is making demands and will not rest until it has been afforded release. I need to keep Watson at arm's length until then and nip any salacious thoughts in the bud. There is no other way. We are in the midst of an investigation.

Once we have regained mastery over ourselves, we nod to each other. Watson is unusually sober. He packs away the letters and we take a look at the study attached to the victim's bedroom. It is a tight space. We leave the door open this time. Sewing paraphernalia lies on a rough-hewn wooden table, beside it a pile of laundry in need of repair. A basket with yarn. In the corner a chair with a spinning wheel. Approximately a dozen linen bags hang suspended at eye level on two hemp ropes draped over a wooden rod. They are tied shut with linen ribbons, each bearing a label of stiff card attached to the ribbon with a thin hemp string. Written in a lovely bold hand with black ink are the contents of each bag: _Calendula offic. – Tiliae platyph. flor. – Chamomilla – Salvia offic. – Angelicae arch. rad._ The typical dried apothecary plants that are employed on man and beast in these parts. What surprises me is the scientific care with which they are labelled.

"The lady was clearly possessed of a knowledge of botany," I inform Watson.

"Or Waugh was."

"No. This is a woman's hand, and identical to the writing in the letters. We shall question Waugh on the matter."

Watson is in agreement. He leaves the room and goes downstairs. I remain standing there, however, staring at the little linen sack I did not notice at first hanging amongst the others. _Vitex ag. cast. fruct._ The berries are dried. I extract a handful from the sack, bind them up in my handkerchief, and stow them in my trouser pocket.


	4. The Farmer's Wife

The chaste-tree berries occupy my thoughts. I find a bowl of them in the Waughs' kitchen, next to a mortar and pestle with traces of the same. I hold it under James Waugh's nose and ask if he knows what it is.

"A spice. Some kind of pepper. My wife seasoned everything she could with it."

I would need to speak with the Doctor to discover in more detail the effects of the plant, but I prefer not to. He knows nothing of the pepper. He is out in the garden, talking to the children and the widower's sister. The two boys ran off when Watson and I approached them. Waugh's sister has decreed that only the Doctor may speak to them. Not both of us, and especially not I. They are afraid of me. John is the one who is good with people, who can talk to them, comfort them, help them. Not I.

I ask one of the ladies assisting with serving the mourners whether there is anyone present who knows about plants. She answers in the affirmative and fetches an old woman who leans heavily on a cane. She has a pronounced limp and is twisted and dessicated from the harshness of country life. She is dressed completely in black and wears the flat hat in the local style perched on top of her bun of white hair. I pull her to one side, out in the hallway, and ask her about the chaste-tree berries.

"Women take them for their monthly pains," she says.

"What about the men?"

"They don't take them."

"What if they do?"

"I don't recommend that, young man," she says. "You will only make your wife unhappy and remain childless."

"Do they have any side effects?"

She gives me a look which is both sceptical and amused. Then she says, "If you take them long enough, you will not only lose any desire but also the ability to lie with a woman. Is that enough?"

"Yes, that's enough. Thank you."

She nods and starts to limp back to the sitting room, only to turn back to me once more and say, "Take an old woman's advice, young man. Don't touch the stuff."

*****

I finger the dried berries through the material of the handkerchief in my pocket as the Doctor and I stroll at a leisurely pace through the countryside back to our cottage. It is just outside the next village, and we are enjoying the extended walk, happy to be free of all those people. Watson is busily retelling what he has found out. We have discovered much in the course of the day, and I must confess that a picture is beginning to take shape in my head, in which the suspects are becoming more and more clear.

It is late in the afternoon and oppressively hot. The air seems to be more humid than it was in the morning. And yet the heat bothers me less. Perhaps because I know that we will be able to cool off at the well behind the cottage very soon. Perhaps it is the anticipation of being alone and undisturbed with John tonight. Perhaps it is the hard berries between my fingers. Most likely it is the case that is beginning to attain a structure in my head. Not least due to Watson's contributions clarifying and focussing my suspicions. My friend, as so often, has discovered more from his conversation with Waugh's sister than I would have been able to. His charming, trustworthy manner is especially endearing to the fairer sex, often leading them to divulge much more than they intended. Thus I receive important information through my beloved Doctor that I would not have been able to gather myself.

The murdered woman worked as a nanny in Birmingham for a while before seizing the opportunity to marry out in the country, away from the stifling city society whose demands on her womanly duties she found chafing. She wanted to work with horses and be her own mistress. James Waugh found her through a matchmaker. Her family in Birmingham were supposedly happy to have her taken care of and were prepared to pay a goodly dowry in exchange. She was said not to have taken much interest in men, in fact to have acted very like a man herself. She sometimes wore trousers, hung out with horses, and rode like a man. Gossip around the village said she had secretly chased after women, and that that had ruined her reputation in Birmingham. That was also presumed to be the reason for marrying a man with children out in the country, in order to start a new life as a reformed woman. Which didn't seem to have worked, to judge by the results.

"She doesn't look much like a Tom to me. She looks like a perfectly ordinary country woman," I point out.

"And you look like a perfectly ordinary gentleman, Holmes," Watson counters. "And if you'll allow: so do I. And yet our tendencies are quite different than one might expect."

"Of course you are right, my friend. But if she wanted to start afresh, she may indeed have done so. I cannot believe she had a lover. Especially not in the very village in which she lived."

"Perhaps she went further afield. She often rode out. That may have fanned the rumours of her secret love affairs."

"We may spy a companion in mourning at the funeral tomorrow," I say.

We walk for a while in silence, my Doctor and I. The notion that women indulge in sensual pleasures amongst themselves is a foreign one, and one which I shy away from. None of the village women to whom I spoke had an unkind word to say about the deceased. They all praised the children's upbringing, her cleanliness and tidiness, and her efforts and progress in the agricultural arts. And yet the undertones are unmistakable in ascribing attributes of secrecy and aloofness to the deceased. The men of the village prefer to distance themselves entirely. They acknowledge her expertise with horses and her skill at riding, with the caveat that it is unbecoming for a woman, despite the fact that they profited from her knowledge.

"We must assume, Doctor, that the victim's husband was perfectly well aware whom he was marrying. Even his sister betrayed that much. But the dowry seems to have been more important."

"Waugh's grief is profound, Holmes. He seems quite shaken and does not give the appearance of a greedy man."

"Appearances can deceive, Doctor, as you yourself explained mere minutes ago."

"Her relations from Birmingham are due to arrive this evening," Watson says. "We should learn more about the lady tomorrow in any event. But for tonight, my dear friend, my mind is on other things than furthering the investigation."

Mine as well. And yet it continues to niggle at me that none of the men who were shearing sheep with Waugh on the day of the murder can vouch for his presence for more than one or two hours at a time, since they worked in constantly alternating shifts. That makes a seamless verification virtually impossible. I have instructed Inspector Schofield to make a note of each window of opportunity and lay them side by side. That should show whether Waugh has an alibi.

Watson walks beside me, lost in his own thoughts. He has slung his waistcoat over his shoulder and opened his shirt, his eyes fixed on the uneven path in front of him. Beads of sweat shimmer on the sinewy hand with which he is holding the waistcoat. His shirt is stained and damp with sweat. I am also soaked through. But I sense that my body will remain complacent as long as I occupy my mind well enough.

When we reach the cottage, banks of clouds tower to the north-west, a grey band at their base. The precursors of a thunderstorm. We first go to the well behind the house, have a drink and cool off our arms, faces, and necks. Watson runs his wet hands through his hair, smiling at me. The sticky, pale hair standing on end, the water drops on his lashes, make him look like an overeager schoolboy for a magical, fleeting moment. He places one hand on my shoulder and squeezes it before mutely making his way into the house. Mrs Walton has left a simple supper for us: bread, cheese, boiled eggs, cold mutton, wine.

Both of us are hungry, so we eat first, sitting at the kitchen table. It is cooler inside than it is outside. We eat without speaking. I attempt to concentrate on the case, on anything to distract me. If I do not, my senses will hone in on the man seated next to me. My eyes hang on his powerful, brawny hands, on the titillatingly attractive line of his lips, his grey eyes, the pale lashes, his smile. My nose latches on to his odour, to his skin and the dampness of his hair. My body inclines toward him. I cannot stop it. My mental powers are insufficient to lift me past the knowledge that John is available to me. The mere thought of it makes me conscious of my groin, the heat and impatient buzzing there. Like a swarm of bees.

We do not linger at our meal. We make sure that we are alone in the house, take towels, bucket, curd soap and brush, and go out to the well. The heat has become even more oppressive, the air even more humid. The first rumblings of thunder are audible in the distance. We wash in the nude as we did the previous evening. But this time is different. The knowledge that we are alone is like a drug that makes us dizzy. 

John soaps up my back, and this time nothing stands in the way of the soft washing-brush. I feel John's bare body against my back, a slippery film of soap between us, as the brush moves across my chest, chafing my nipples, scrubbing my navel, over my hip to the rear, spreading the soapy foam between my cheeks. Then the brush slides forward, massaging the inside of my thighs, slow and seductive. I hear John panting at my nape as he starts to wash my prick, which is already hard. John's rampant cockstand insinuates itself behind my nether cheeks, rubbing amidst the suds, as the bristles of the brush with their firm strokes and gentle coddling quickly stimulate me to the point of climax. I am paralysed with fear and arousal. We are out in the open, anyone might see us. The circumstances arouse me even further, and the unfamiliar amalgam of emotions overpowers me. I am lost. John bites my shoulder with a choked-off gasp as my seed mixes with the soapy suds. For a moment, I believe I have fainted from the pain of the bite and the power of the release.

Watson does not allow me to do anything for him. He dumps a bucket of icy water over my head before I am even able to turn around, taking my breath away. He then pours more water over himself, rinses the soap from his body, and wraps a towel around himself.

"Let's go up," he says, his voice thick.

I need another bucketful of water to rid myself of the soap. I am still quite foggy. Lightning flashes to the north-west. Thunder growls. Dark clouds move in front of the sun. An ominous dusk spreads across the land. The first gust of wind caresses my body. Watson helps me, pouring water over me as I wash the last traces of lather from my skin.


	5. The Storm

John bars the door behind him and tosses his clothes across the chair. He is laughing. Out of breath. We bundled ourselves in the towels and ran into the house, fleeing the strong gusts that swept abruptly through the garden, tearing leaves from the trees and pelting us with the first hailstones. We grabbed our clothes and ran breathlessly up the stairs to the attic space. It is dark there, as if night has fallen. Lightning and thunder outside. The storm is raging in the trees, rattling the roof and howling in the chimney. Hissing, roaring, raving and causing havoc. Hail pelts the shingles directly above our heads, a deafening sound.

I stand in the middle of the chamber, ensconced in the towel, dripping. The Doctor stands in front of me. His eyes are gleaming. A glow from the deepest depths. Lightning flashes in. He smiles. A gentle, tender, expectant smile, as he reaches for the hand holding the towel over my chest, takes the cloth from me and slowly draws it away from my body. Rough linen scrapes my skin. Watson observes me unabashed. His breaths come quicker. His gaze is palpable on my body. Lingering. I can feel it as if it were his fingers. The roaring and raging outside. 

I reach out my hand for the cloth which Watson has tied around his hips. The tips of my fingers glide over the knot directly beneath his navel. The knot is tight and rough. Warm skin underneath. I do not touch the skin, merely undo the knot, slowly, with both hands now. Watson allows it. I can smell his damp hair, this close to him; his skin. The muscular torso right in front of me. The pale hairs scattered across it. Hard nipples. Heavy breaths. I loose the knot and simply let go of the cloth, letting it slide to the floor. 

John's prick is plainly engorged, standing at attention in the half-light of the room. I suppress the impulse to touch it. I take a step back and observe Watson, just as he observes me. Slow and greedy. It is the first time we have had the opportunity to do so. The first time we have had the time and the space. The safety. The certainty that we are allowed.

Thus we stand: two naked men. Ready to shut out the world. Ready to disregard all of its rules. Ready to allow whatever comes. The stillness of the chamber between us in the dusky light. Nothing but our breathing. All hell outside. Raging, stomping, booming. Lighting flashes across our bare skin. Thunder makes us deaf to anything there might be outside. Rain and hail create a roaring cave for us.

Watson is waiting. His grey eyes glitter, his lips are parted. I move closer to him, reach out my hand, trace the elongated bow of his upper lip with my fingertips. I dip into his mouth, fascinated by the feel of the moist, warm, soft flesh. Watson suckles on my fingers, his tongue wetting them with saliva, and I withdraw, drawing a wet line across his lips, passing over them, breathless. In and out. In again. Watson has closed his eyes. He moans softly. My prick reacts strongly when he licks my middle finger with abandon, draws it into his mouth and sucks on it lasciviously.

I cannot help it: I lean into him and insistently add my tongue, press my way in between his lips, into the heat and wetness. My own stiff finger, John's tongue. It drives me mad, what we are doing here. I take my hand out of his mouth and plunge in all the way with my tongue, holding his head steady as I dig my fingers into his hair. Our bodies seek each other, surging together. We both groan. Watson's hard loins press against mine. Our kiss is uncontrolled and unrestrained. I forsake all thought, give myself completely over to my body and its instincts. To Watson.

The Doctor guides me to my bed, pushes me down on it. I sit on the edge and he kneels before me, stroking my thighs, gently pushing them apart. I cannot turn my eyes away from what he is doing. His tongue, his hand, the sucking wet cavern of his mouth. Watching as he sucks and licks and teases, the way my prick slides into his mouth. It is outrageous. I lean back on my arms, digging my fingers into the linens. I want to move my hips, lift them toward him, into him, but Watson's grip is implacable. He presses my thighs apart and holds me down. He leaves me no room to manoeuvre.

"John," I gasp. I am afraid it will be over too quickly, but Watson knows precisely what he is doing. I am steadier now, following the initial release outside at the well. Yes, Watson knows precisely what he is doing. He stops in order to stand up, and I pull him down to me on the bed, where we embrace each other fiercely.

It is a privilege. I am aware of that in moments like this, and am amazed at being able to hold my beloved friend in my arms like this. Naked, hot, the basest urges of the body coupled with the deepest longings of the soul. Rain slaps down onto the roof. The thick air in the attic now smells fresh and cool. I simply allow everything to happen that is happening to me. John is steering us both. He understands these things. I trust him. Blindly. He allows us to sink together into this maelstrom, deeply and without reservation.

He makes use of the Vaseline eventually, and with the last spark of consciousness that I possess, I understand that we are standing with both feet in the inferno, that we are breaking all the rules and joining the deadliest sinners and criminals when he gently thrusts into me. His bone-like organ sliding into me, filling me up, invading me; his hand, slippery with the Vaseline, stroking and rubbing me; his groans and increasingly frenetic demands making me lose my head entirely. 

But then John stops, shortly before we reach our climax. We are both panting uncontrollably from our tempestuous heat, and I want only one thing: everything, no holds barred. Watson holds me from behind, surrounding me, inveigles his tongue into my ear and moans: "Sherlock."

It drives me round the final bend. I writhe in John's arms, pressing my hips against him to take him further into me. I want him to give himself up inside me. To give himself up entirely. I want to feel the contraction, his hot seed, when he loses himself to me. I want his total loss of control. I want him. Completely.

"No, Sherlock," he whispers, a hot stream of air behind my ear.

Lightning flashes through the room. A long, crackling thunderclap shakes the house. John holds me tightly pressed against him. We both lie still. I feel John's breath in and on my body. Both of our breaths. John caresses me, runs his hand through my hair, down my neck, over my chest, my nipples. Possessive. Salacious. I twist and moan, unable to hold back. He strokes my groin. Across the tip of my prick. Slowly. I can't stand it any longer. I feel John inside me, hard as a rock, so close to release. John drags me closer to him with one arm, penetrating me even deeper, setting off hellfire with his fingers on my cockstand and his formidable contractions inside me. I hear the hoarse cry that bursts forth from me as I bite down on white linen and scrabble into the pillow. Thunder rolls over us. Again and again. The flashes of light from the electrical discharges twitch across our bodies, the storm howls over the roof, tearing shingles with it. I hear them smash against the ground. I am shaking all over. Watson has bitten my shoulder again in his ecstasy.

We lie nestled close together. John holds me close. He stays inside me until his prick retreats on its own. That gives us some time. Time to come back to our senses, to catch our breath. Time to realise what we have done. What has happened. Time to understand what it means. If that is even possible.

I will never understand how this rush is caused solely by dint of a bodily function. So many things are unexplained. Does man have an immortal soul? I am a man of science. And yet I sometimes fancy, when I gaze deep into Watson's eyes, that we have known each other much longer than we have been in our bodies. Many hundreds of years. That we have often done the things that we sinfully practise in secret. That this intimate familiarity is not of this time. How else should we experience this mutual ecstasy and rapture so freely and profoundly, as if there were no barriers and no law? It is like a memory of a time of careless abandon. If that be true, if our souls know each other from another time, then I must admit to the correctness of the beliefs of the Theosophists of the London Lodge in this matter.

Such are my thoughts as I lie in Watson's arms and the thunderstorm lazily moves on around us. It is still raining hard. But the lightning, the thunder, the storm lessen.

*****

The next morning everything is out of order. Mrs Walton knocks on our door, which is locked. John and I slept tightly wound around each other. My bed is rumpled and we soiled the linens in an unmistakable manner. John gets up, pulls on his dressing gown, and receives the fresh washing-water at the door whilst I burrow into my bed and feign sleep. John exchanges a few words with Mrs Walton then sets the water on the commode. He comes over and sits down beside me on the bed.

"Holmes," he says softly as he tenderly runs his hand through my Vaseline-sticky hair. "We should get up. The funeral is today."

We wash and dress silently. Watson dishevels his own bed, pulls the dirty sheet off of mine, folds it up and lays it on the floor.

"I've asked Mrs Walton to bring a fresh one," he explains.

"Watson! What did you tell her?"

"That you have a weeping wound that was in need of my attention."

"She is perfectly capable of putting two and two together, Doctor."

"Yet she will not. She won't check more closely, her curiosity has been satisfied. And even if she does, she will believe me. I am a doctor."

"It is a dangerous game, Watson."

"Have you a better solution, Holmes?"

We stare at each other. A long time. There are other solutions. Perhaps.

"No," I say. "Thank you, Doctor."

We breakfast in silence. Mrs Walton does not pose any questions, nor does she impose herself. She sets apple juice, porridge, stewed fruit, eggs, cheese, and baked tomatoes on the table and leaves us to it. She is a reticent woman by nature. I am grateful for that. 

We eat in the kitchen. It is raining lightly outside. I feel a deep, quiet connection to Watson, whose grey, thoughtful eyes find mine again and again. My Doctor. I have not injected cocaine since I began having immoral relations with him. He quenches my addiction. He stills my unease. He satiates my body and my soul.

Constable Hartley, put at our disposal by Inspector Schofield, picks us up for the funeral in his buggy. The neighbouring village has a small church, behind which is the cemetery. The relatives from Birmingham have arrived. Father and mother, two brothers, a sister and two aunts of the deceased. A few of the women from the village are there, one or two men. More out of curiosity than mourning, it seems to me. In any event, it is an unusually large funeral for a woman with whom no one wished to have anything to do.

Watson and I keep to the background, observing the people. Everyone appears calm. James Waugh is the only one who truly appears to despair. He wipes his eyes with a handkerchief. His sister never leaves his side. His fingers clench his hat when he removes it from his head for the prayer. Inspector Schofield points out a man standing with the villagers. Alistair Boon. Waugh's alibi. The man had been rounding up sheep with Waugh at the time the crime occurred.

"Can anyone else corroborate that?" I inquire.

"All of the men," Schofield replies. "Waugh and Boon set off together and returned with the sheep."

"When?"

"About an hour later. They would have had to gather the animals from the meadow and then drive them to the farm where the shearing was being done."

"I should like to see the farm and the meadow."

"Constable Hartley can take you."

"After the burial. I would like to speak with Alistair Boon first."


	6. Dog and Horse

"It's the dog, Watson."

"I can't follow your train of thought, Holmes. Whose dog?"

"Boon's, I presume."

I crouch down and point to the sheep droppings, in which the outline of a dog's paw is clearly imprinted. The claws are distinct. They dig deep into the dropping, all the way to the soil beneath. The dog was running. I look up at Watson, who is standing beside me on the meadow and gazing down at me with an inquisitive expression.

"The dog was rounding up the sheep, Doctor. Not Waugh."

"The dog might simply have been running across the field."

"No. The leaving was quite fresh when the dog stepped in it. It was warm and not dry yet, so the animals were still here. And it was before the rain. The dog would have left a trail in the softened mud otherwise, and that is not the case. It was running on the dry ground and trampled over the fresh spoor. No question."

"It's not proof, Holmes."

"No. But it is a clue, my dear Doctor. Constable Hartley!"

"Mr Holmes?"

"Did any of the men say that Boon and Waugh brought the sheep to the farm with the help of a dog?"

"No, sir. Someone would have noticed, and it wouldn't have been very smart besides. The men lock their dogs up when they do the shearing. Stray dogs make the sheep uneasy."

"Boon lives five minutes away on horseback. He could have fetched the dog to help then sent it back home afterwards."

"That's also my belief, Watson. And in the meantime, Waugh could have ridden home and killed his wife. His farm is also only five minutes away from here."

"But it takes much longer to kill a woman and throw her in the cesspool than it does to fetch a dog, Holmes."

"That, Doctor, is precisely the point."

"Also: what motive would Waugh have had to kill his wife? She was doing a neat job of managing the household and children."

"We shall see. We should pay Boon a visit at his farm, Watson. Can you drive us there, Hartley?"

"Of course, Mr Holmes."

It is too wet to drive across the field. We ride instead on the path, which is utterly soaked from the rain and has been maltreated by horses' hooves and wagon wheels. Water has gathered in the holes. It splashes up when the two horses clomp through it, arduously dragging our vehicle through the puddles, mud, and pot-holes. I cling to the narrow wooden seat. We are thoroughly rattled and tossed from one side to the other. Watson is sitting across from me. I had intended to speak to him about my suspicions, but we are entirely occupied with holding on.

Boon's farm does not deserve the title. It is a small, pitiful patch of land. It stinks from afar of the three pigs wallowing in the muck in a narrow enclosure beside the house. Chickens scatter apart, cackling, as we drive up. A dog barks at us. It is a black-and-white border Collie that promptly falls silent and complies when a woman steps out of the house and calls it back. The woman is holding a butcher knife, wiping her bloody hands on her apron. We seem to have distubed her during an unpleasant chore.

"Mrs Boon?" I inquire.

"What do you want?" she retorts baldly.

I introduce myself and Watson, saying that we are assisting the local constabulary with the Waugh murder and wish to speak with her. The Doctor and I have descended from the buggy and walk through the mud, nearly ankle-deep and speckled with chicken droppings, to the door of the house.

"I don't know anything," she says coolly.

"I presume you knew Mrs Waugh," I propose.

"Everyone knew her round here. She stuck out well enough."

"May we step into the house?"

She doesn't appear to be particularly happy about our business, but allows us to enter, going ahead of us into the kitchen. The ceiling inside is so low that I am forced to duck my head in order not to hit it on the soot-blackened ceiling beams. The woman indicates a rough wooden bench at an equally rough wooden table, upon which lie pieces of two rabbits, a bowl filled with innards, and the two freshly stripped skins. 

I sit down, trying not to touch the blood-, fat-, and gore-smeared table. A bloody rabbit head sits directly in front of me, its eye cavities empty and its teeth long and yellow. Dozens of flies evince their interest in the meat. Watson remains standing and looks around.

"What do you want?" the woman repeats.

I ask about her husband, children and other members of the household. How well they knew the deceased. She says her husband went back to the sheep-shearing after the funeral. She has four children, and her husband's sister also lives with them. She is apparently out in the vegetable patch. Her husband caught the hares. There are enough of them out there, she says. As for the Waugh woman: she was an odd one. Rode around on her horse like an Amazon. People noticed that.

"Is your husband well acquainted with James Waugh? Or do you have any other connections to the Waughs?" I ask.

She hesitates. Just for a moment, pushing the knife which she had laid on the table slightly away from herself with one hand. 

"Not that I know of." She doesn't look at me when she answers. She is being evasive. I am certain that she is lying.

"When your husband brought his own sheep to be sheared four days ago, did he take the dog to round them up?"

"Yes, he did. The sheep were on the meadow right over there. He took the dog, then sent her back home."

"He arrived on horseback?"

"Of course he did. He rides all the time."

"It's a riding horse?" Watson asks.

"No, a work horse. But he's good for riding too."

"And the dog came back alone."

"Yes, she knows the way home."

Her answers are impatient. The questions likely appear strange to her, posed as they are by us city-folk, unversed in the ways of the country.

"Can you ride, Mrs Boon?" I ask.

She give me a sceptical look, then shakes her head, amused.

"Every girl who grows up round here learns to ride and drive a wagon," she says. "But no grown woman would willingly sit on a horse."

*****

"The Boons have TWO horses, Watson," I say when we are back in cottage early that evening. "And they are lying. All three of them."

It won't leave me alone. Pauline Boon, the sister of Alistair Boon, out in the vegetable patch a short distance away from the house, a patch of earth surrounded by a low wall of uncut stones. She was loosening the soil and weeding around the tomatoes. She looked up when we drove past. I bade Hartley to stop, and went over to her. She wore a scarf on her head, pulled far forward. Perhaps because it was raining when she began her work. More likely because she had been crying. Her eyes were quite red. I asked whether she had known Waugh's wife.

"Of course," she said. "Everyone knew her."

"Are you in mourning on her account?"

"Pardon?" She looked at me as if she didn't understand the question.

"You've been crying," I said.

She barked out a laugh, short and bitter.

"Oh that! No, that's the monkshood." She pointed at the blue blossoms along the wall. "I must have inadvertently rubbed it in my eyes."

"Can monkshood cause irritation and inflammation?" I ask Watson later, but he does not know.

A saddle was hanging in the Boons' barn. I saw it through the open barn door as we drove by. I didn't really notice it at the time. Only now when I reflect back on the facts we have gathered does it occur to me. My brain retained the image. I can rely on it. My dependable brain.

"Boon was out with one horse, and I didn't see another one," Watson says.

"Nor did I, my dear friend. It may have been on the paddock. But there was a second saddle and bridle. Boon will have been using one set."

"And what do you conclude from that, Holmes?"

I do not know yet. There are too many pieces, too many loose pieces in my head. They form pictures. More than one. Motives. Several. But none are definitive. I need to think it over. I need to think it over more carefully. Even more carefully. I need to look more closely. To analyse and put the pieces together.

We are sitting outside on the bench along one wall of the house. We have filled our pipes and are smoking, waiting for the dinner Mrs Walton is preparing in the kitchen. It stopped raining a while ago. Watson sits shoulder to shoulder with me. As always, when we are alone and sitting together. I know the weight of his body next to mine. The smell of his tobacco, his clothing, his emanations. Watson's idle hand rests on his thigh, directly beside mine. Such lovely hands the Doctor has. Sinewy and powerful and evenly formed. He takes care of them. Even out here in the country, his fingernails are clean and trimmed. His hands embody an indomitable tenderness, marked by a decisive warmth.

I take a deep breath, stretch and press my back against the wall behind me. Watson's hands are snatching my thoughts away to unseemly daydreams, causing the blood to flow into my loins. I cannot look at his hands. I draw the smoke from my pipe deep into my body, let it sweep through my head. I need to purify my thoughts. I need them as clear as crystal now. So many facts in my head. Sharply-angled puzzle pieces being blown about as if by gusty blasts of wind. Continually spinning in a circle. They scrape and scratch me. I cannot stop them, they elude my observation and analysis. It hurts. My head hurts. And it will continue to hurt until the edges of the pieces are lined up and the facts fall into place, creating a picture that explains everything.

Mrs Walton calls us to dinner. We knock out our pipes and go into the kitchen. It smells of onions and meat. Mrs Walton sets the apple cider and the pot with mutton stew on the table, along with potatoes, bread, and the obligatory cheese. The mutton has been cooked with onion, garlic, sorrel and tomatoes. Mrs Walton scoops a portion onto my plate. It smells spicy, lying before me in its red sauce. Watson has gone back outside to wash the tobacco from his hands. I reach into my trouser pocket, take out the knotted handkerchief, and open it. I ground the dried berries into a brownish powder with the mortar and pestle in Mrs Walton's kitchen when no one was looking. The powder feels soft and fine between my fingers. I sprinkle it over the mutton. A generous amount. I need to be able to think.

No sooner have I re-tied my handkerchief than Watson returns.

"What's that?" he asks.

He is standing in front of me, looking at my plate. I have not stirred anything in yet. He has seen it. Saw me sprinkling something over my food when he entered the kitchen.

"A local spice," I say, mixing the pepper into the stew.

Watson grabs my hand without warning and turns it over. Some powder still clings to my fingers. Watson does not hesitate. He holds my hand in a steely grip, licks my skin with the tip of his tongue, testing. He tastes the powder, distributes it in his mouth, checks it. He keeps his eyes on mine the whole time. I see the grey widen in disbelief. Then it closes up again, becoming hard and as blank as slate. Watson lets my hand go, just like that. He lowers himself onto the wooden bench, shoves his plate and utensils away, sets his elbows on the table and covers his face with his hands. He is breathing heavily. I wait for him to say something, but he sits there silently.

I take up my spoon and start to eat. The stew is bitter and so spicy that it goes right up my nose, setting off a coughing fit. A mouthful of bread and a little cider put an end to the torment. I add some potatoes to my plate, mash them, and mix them with the meat. It is still spicy, but edible like this. Watson does not move.

"Eat, Doctor," I implore him. 

He takes his hands away from his face and looks at me. 

"Why are you doing this, Holmes?" he asks softly. His voice is filled with pain, threatens to crack.

"I need to solve the case and don't have any potassium bromide."

He looks at me, horrifed. There is something in his eyes that frightens me.

"Holmes. You use potassium bromide?" His voice is shaking.

"I have used it in the past," I correct him. "But not since..."

I do not speak any further, as the grey in his eyes clouds over. Then it becomes translucent and wet. Slowly. Very slowly. I have never seen it, never before. I have never seen tears in Watson's eyes before. He swallows hard. Then he stand up and leaves.

I sit there, not knowing what I should do. Go after him? I should not have mentioned the potassium bromide. I used to use it to enforce calm in my body when the Doctor's proximity awakened undesired impulses in me. It allowed me to deny my feelings and reject the Doctor. For many, many months.


	7. Initial Results

I am violently ill. John holds the bucket for me when it overcomes me once more. I gag and cramp up and vomit copiously. I shudder with disgust. The acidic sourness burns my throat, driving tears into my swollen eyes. Watson sits beside me on the bed and doesn't say a word, just holds the bucket for me. It seems to go on forever. My stomach has been empty for a while now, but it keeps regurgitating sour slime and caustic heat. Over and over. My nightshirt is soaked with sweat. I am on the verge of collapsing. I huddle over the bucket and struggle to breathe. Saliva drips from my mouth. Tears run unchecked from my inflamed eyes and likewise fall into the bucket. I touched the monkshood in the garden, rubbed it into my eyes. 

Watson mutely hands me the damp cloth. I take it but am not even able to wipe myself with it before a fresh wave of nausea makes me cough and vomit again. I gag and spit. Then I wait, panting. Crouch over the bucket and wait. Tears, spit, and mucus flow out of me. Watson takes the cloth from me, wipes my mouth, pushes me back against the pillows. Not a word. Calm. He takes the bucket away somewhere. I hear him descending the stairs.

My stomach clenches. My throat burns. My eyes sting. My pulse is racing. I hope I can hold out until the Doctor returns. I am chilled. I shiver beneath the cover. I am exhausted, right down to my bones.

Watson comes back after a few minutes and sits beside me. He has brought the bucket back, sets it next to the bed. He has a damp cloth that smells fresh, like diluted vinegar. He uses it to clean and soothe my face and eyes. Carefully. The crisp smell of vinegar crowds out the stink of vomit, floats up into my nose and head, clarifying as it goes. Watson washes the sticky layer of sweat from my face. I open my eyes with a concerted effort, gaze into the gentle, careworn grey.

"John," I whisper. My voice rasps roughly over my burnt vocal cords. "Forgive me."

John's eyes are brimming with sadness. He nods briefly, mute. His expression is somber and bitter. He is so pensive. So very pensive that it frightens me.

"John."

"Try to sleep, Holmes," he says coolly.

I close my eyes. Everything hurts. Inside and out.

"I am a fool," I whisper as a surge of tears breaks forth from my eyes.

"Yes, you are," Watson says.

I feel for his arm, hold fast to his wrist. He allows it, laying his other hand comfortingly over mine.

*****

I have nothing but tea for breakfast. I feel much better, but I do not yet trust my stomach. Watson is still very quiet, his appetite seems to be greatly reduced. He usually eats with such gusto and pleasure. Now, he scoops out his egg with slow, unaccustomed motions, lost in thought; chews his bread and cheese with a listless demeanour.

"We are going to pay a call on the Widower Waugh to-day," I announce in an attempt to distract my Doctor with other thoughts.

Watson looks up. He is grave, his eyes study me. Then he sets his spoon down beside his plate and says, his voice heavy and doleful, "I was going to go back to London today, Holmes."

The words startle me, setting off a whirlwind of fear inside me. I am afraid that Watson might leave. Terribly afraid. I am afraid he might return to London without me, and from there out of my life. Go his own way. Another way. Leave me. I gaze into Watson's eyes, not knowing what to do or say. I want Watson to stay with me. Now. Today. Tomorrow. Always. Always.

"Watson. Please, stay." Fear flutters in my voice. I cannot conceal it.

"My presence obviously irritates and confuses you."

"No. No. You are not the cause of my irritation and confusion. I need you, Doctor. I need you by my side. In my life. Completely, in every way. You have never irritated me, not for a single moment. What irritates and confuses me is what happens to me. This imperious dictate of my body. It distracts me from what is most imperative. That has nothing to do with you, Doctor."

His eyes search mine. The sadness is joined by astonishment and a trace of anger. Something seizes up within me. Fear. Then Watson speaks, his tone coming across as lecturing as well as somewhat detached and impatient.

"What happens to you, Holmes, is an entirely normal physical reaction. The more naturally you accept its effects, the quicker your body will acclimate, and you will once more be at peace. Stop fighting it."

"My body's reactions are not what is commonly deemed normal, Doctor."

"You are wrong, Holmes. Your body reacts in a perfectly normal manner. And you have the usual bodily functions that any man has. Not even your brilliant mind can spare you that. So just stop it." The anger in Watson's voice cannot be missed now.

"I understand your point of view on the matter, Doctor. Still, I must demur."

"Why do you not observe, Holmes? Why do you not look at the facts? Why do you not draw your conclusions from what you acknowledge to be true? The same way you do in all other cases? Adam and Eve are not the only option."

"You mean the laws of nature."

"You yourself are the best proof that our model of nature cannot be complete. But you prefer to destroy the facts rather than consider them. You question every theory but this one. And you call yourself a man of science? A free spirit? You have failed, Holmes! Not as a man, but as a thinker. And if you believe to have found a solution in monkshood and potassium bromide, I can guarantee you one thing, my friend: you may rid yourself of me, but you cannot be rid of your body. You will always be confronted with it. With or without me."

Watson's words have become more heated and indignant. He throws down the serviette and stands abruptly, but I grab him by the wrist before he can leave.

"John."

He stares at me, his eyes flashing. I know I have broken a rule. I have used his first name. An intimacy that does not belong in public.

"Holmes! Let me go."

"Sit down, Doctor." It takes everything I have to make my statement calm and firm. I am upset by my friend's strong words, his reproaches and allegations, which I must acknowledge are true.

We stare at each other, Watson looking down at me with his grey eyes still glittering. I cling to his wrist, determined not to let him go.

"Watson. My friend. Please."

Watson sits down again grumpily, and I let his wrist go.

"What do you want of me, Holmes?" he asks, discontent still in his tone.

I consider what I should say to him. Watson is right. I know he is. I started fighting my body when I was young, long before the Doctor entered my life. I was always aware of the fact that the male body does not necessarily prefer that which guarantees offspring. I myself am the best proof of that. I know of what Watson speaks. He may have experienced something similar. And yet his mind is open enough to recognise what is fact. Mine is not. I am ashamed of what my Doctor has had to say to me.

"You are correct, Doctor. I am able to see that," I confess.

I cannot think of anything further to say. Just that. I feel weak and upset, both physically and mentally. We are sitting at the breakfast which Mrs Walton set up for us outside. The weather is fine again, the rain having stopped a while ago. I have my tea before me. The Doctor takes a deep breath, letting it out again in a heavy stream.

"Good," he says quietly.

We continue to sit there without speaking. Watson eats some of his bread and cheese, preoccupied. I drink the tea, then take two or three spoonfuls of the porridge Watson optimistically nudges in my direction.

After a while, when Mrs Walton has cleared the table, Watson offers an olive branch. 

"We still have time before Constable Hartley picks us up. Why don't we take a stroll, Holmes, before driving over to Waugh's place."

We walk along the path leading away from the cottage toward the barley field. Our steps are slow and silent. I still feel a little weak in the knees and have hooked my arm around Watson's. I am so incredibly grateful that he has stayed. That he stayed by my side during the night. That he is not returning to London, but staying with me.

"Thank you. Thank you for being here with me," I say.

"It makes more sense to clear the air than to run away," he replies. "Even if my initial impulse may have been otherwise. I do not wish to leave you, Holmes."

"I do not wish to drive you away, my dear Watson."

"Let us then face the facts. We are both clever enough to hide what should not be seen. We shall find ways to live our life, Holmes. There are ways to satisfy the impatient passions of the body without resorting to chemical castration."

"Such as? I would be quite grateful to you, Doctor, if you would assist me with your medical expertise."

"We will do what your body demands, as often and as regularly as necessary, so that it does not reach a point of crisis. It will become accustomed to being satisfied at any time, and thus develop patience."

"Watson." I have stopped walking; our eyes meet. "Have I understood you correctly? You wish to engage in immoral acts as often as possible?"

"I wish to share what belongs to the two of us together as often as possible, Holmes. No matter what the world thinks of it."

"You are bold, Doctor."

I cannot help but admire him for the way he thinks and what he is. What he is to me as well. A strong and intrepid friend. And a loving partner in all these things that unsettle me so greatly.

"Holmes," he says lightly. "Every farmer out here knows that the ram sometimes mounts the ram, one steer another, the tomcat its fellow. Even the mares mount each other. Nature is not black and white, Holmes. Farmers see it every day, but they are not scientists with the intention to explain the world. They simply want lambs, calves, and foals. Whatever brings that harvest is good. Everything else is superfluous. The steer that does not mount the cow is slaughtered. No one asks why he does not do it."

"Doctor! We are not animals. We are rational beings."

I am horrified at the comparison. Watson smirks. He seems to take pleasure in upsetting me with such declarations.

"I know, I know, my friend." His smirk does not fall away, instead deepening. 

"What are you driving at, Doctor?"

"Nothing. We are rational beings. You are correct, Holmes. We have the ability to recognise ourselves, to arrange what we know into an integrated whole, and to honour that. And so let us do precisely that."

"I must admit your arguments have beaten me this time."

"Then let us return to the cottage, Holmes. We still have an hour to begin what we discussed."

"Now?"

"Have you any substantial counterarguments?"

I do not. Matt Walton is at the sheep-shearing, Mrs Walton at work in the garden. We make our leisurely way up to our garret room. Watson turns the key in the lock, pushes me down onto the bed, and spoils me with his lips and tongue as he presses my thighs apart. A tried and true means of sending me rapidly and directly into the pits of hell. Then he takes what he needs from me. After a quarter of an hour we have both had our fill.

John whispers, "Tonight, Sherlock, I want to have you inside me. Thoroughly and at length."

I am relaxed and content when we drive to Waugh's place in the Constable's buggy. My thoughts, however, are not on the case, but on my friend and lover, and his unexpected desire for the coming night.

*****

A wagon stands in front of James Waugh's house. A simple wooden cart with which the farmers transport all sorts of things. The hitched-up work horse is large and powerful, with a feed sack tied on from which it munches contentedly. It snorts softly and tosses its head up when our buggy arrives and it smells our horses. Waugh's boys give us anxious looks. They are both sitting quietly on the bench in front of the house. I keep my distance from them. Watson, with whom they are acquainted from the interrogation, walks up to them with a smile and speaks to them. They look up at him with awe-filled expressions. The smaller one clutches his wooden horse to his chest.

"They're going to their aunt's," Watson says when he returns.

Inside the house, Waugh and his sister are packing things for the children. Waugh's sister intends to take them with her for the time being. I announce that we need to look around again, and Waugh gives us the run of the place. Watson chats with him and his sister whilst I go out to the scene of the crime.

The blood stain on the wall of the barn has been washed away by now. Someone has removed it quite neatly. The ground around the cess pit has also been cleaned. Nothing is left to indicate that a murder took place here. The barn and the stable are tidy and clean, as is everything here. Two horses are grazing on the paddock behind the house, a black mare and a brown one. The brown one comes to the fence when she spots me, curious. I pat her neck. A flock of chickens scratches and picks in the grass around her legs. Something flashes. A clucking chicken is pecking at some object that reflects the sunlight. 

I cannot reach it from outside the fence, so I open the wooden gate to the paddock and go inside. The brown horse promptly comes with me, sniffing at me. I have no particular love for horses and try to ignore the animal. The chickens run away, flapping their wings and cackling, as I walk toward the spot where the thing twinkled. It is the head of a rivet, likely from a saddle or tack. I pick it up. It is polished, with no sign of rust. It cannot have lain here long.

Waugh's tack and that of his wife hang side by side in the stable. I examine them. There are no missing rivets, neither on either of the two saddles nor on the tack. I walk out behind the house again to look at the wooden fence. Black hairs from the mane and tail of the Waughs' two horses hang in the rough beams. But in one spot, there are two or three blond hairs as well. I carefully draw them out of the splinter on which they caught. Another horse was here recently, saddled and bridled. Behind the house, not in front where guests would dismount and tie up their horses. Someone more well acquainted who brought their horse to the others behind the house and left it here, saddled up.

I tuck away the horse hairs and tell Waugh nothing of what I have found. His sister has already left with the children; my Doctor and the widower are sitting in the kitchen. Waugh looks forlorn.

"I'm going to try to make a home for my children again," he says dully. "They can't stay with my sister forever. She's got three of her own after all."


	8. The Conspiracy

Mrs Boon and Alistair Boon's sister, Pauline, are working together in the vegetable garden.

"What do you want?" Mrs Boon asks coldly when we drive past the patch and come to a halt.

Two dirty little boys with runny noses climb up onto the crooked stone wall surrounding the garden and gape at us, open-mouthed. A slightly older girl is holding a toddler, practically still an infant. Mrs Boon rubs her face with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of dirt. Pauline leans on the hoe and looks at us.

"You have two horses?" I ask, pointing at the nearby paddock where a chestnut horse with a dun-coloured mane and a black horse are peacefully tearing at the grass.

"No," she replies flatly.

"Are those not your horses over there?"

"No."

"I would like to draw your attention to the fact that Messrs Holmes and Waton are conducting an official investigation on behalf of the Sussex Constabulary in the matter of the Waugh murder," Constable Hartly says sternly. "You are required to provide information. Otherwise, you risk being charged as an accessory to murder."

The two women do not appear to be especially impressed by the Constable's dressing-down. But at least Mrs Boon now expands on her reply.

"The chestnut gelding belongs to us," she says. "The young stallion belongs to the Waughs. They've given him to us to take care of."

"Why is that?"

"The late Mrs Waugh wanted to stand him at stud so she never had him fixed but couldn't leave him with her mares. He'll have to go under the knife now."

"Can he be ridden?" Watson inquires.

"Mrs Waugh could ride any horse. He threw my husband."

"Where is your husband, Mrs Boon?" I ask.

"In the house, fixing the chimney. What do you want with him?"

"We have definite clues to the murderer," I say.

"You have a lead?"

"Several. We've found the murder weapon. We will have the guilty party tomorrow."

Pauline Boon pales visibly. Mrs Boon, on the other hand, grins at me and says, "Oh. Looks like it was worth bringing in the expert crime-solvers from London. I hope it's no one from the village."

"We'll all know more tomorrow," I reiterate and nod to the two women. "Thank you for the information."

"You're bluffing, Holmes," Watson says as soon as we are out of hearing distance of the women.

"I have a plan, Doctor. I would like to have a look around the Boons' barn and stable without being disturbed. If you and the Constable would be so good as to occupy Alistair Boon in the interval?"

"Of course, Holmes. What's your plan?"

"Later, Watson. Later."

We have arrived at the Boons' house. I jump down from the buggy and hide in the barn before Alistair Boon appears at the door, alerted by the dog.

A saddle, tack and bridle hang right where I spied them the first time. Beside them another set. I examine both. The second saddle – rather old and worn – has rivets in the back. One of the rivets has been replaced by one which is larger than the original. The missing rivet head is the one which lay behind Waugh's house. In the stable, I find blond horse hairs, which I compare to the ones in my trouser pocket. It is unequivocal. Someone was at the Waughs' with the chestnut gelding.

I go to the house, where Watson and the Constable are speaking to a soot-smeared man who is in the middle of fixing the flue. I am all but certain that my plan will bear fruit.

*****

It is dark. An owl cries somewhere. The sound of a horse's hooves. It is approaching at a gallop. The horse is tired and wheezing. Inspector Schofield nudges me. I nod to him. We have concealed ourselves in the hedgerow. From here, we can see Boon's house. Watson and Constable Hartley are covering James Waugh's farm. I didn't know which of the two would make the journey: Waugh or Boon.

The man dismounts in front of Boon's house, ties up the snorting, sweating animal. I can smell it from here. The dog has already sounded the alarm, the door to the house opens. The man slips inside. It is James Waugh.

The Inspector and I sneak in closer. A short stretch across the meadow before we reach the first fruit tree. The dog becomes restless. I hear it trotting toward us, sniffing in our direction although it is still chained. It growls and lets out a low bark. We move one tree closer and the dog begins to bark frantically. I am prepared; I toss the piece of meat as far as I can in the dog's direction and withdraw again, squeezing behind the tree. The barking stops. I hear the chain, hear the dog sniffing, then gulping. The door to the house opens and Alistair Boon comes out, looks around and calls to the dog. He takes a few steps to the left, then the right, pats the tied-up horse, looks around, waits, and listens. The Inspector and I keep completely still. Eventually, Boon goes back into the house. We wait. It will take a few minutes before the drug takes effect and the dog falls asleep.

The Boons have taken down the storm windows, as all the farmers in the area do so that the house is well ventilated in summer. That makes it a simple matter to see and hear everything that occurs in the sitting room through the thin single panes. They are all sitting at the table – James Waugh, Alistair Boon, his wife, and his sister Pauline – holding a vigorous discussion.

"That Holmes fellow is bluffing," Alistair Boon says. "He can't have found the weapon."

"Are you certain? Why should he lie to us?" his wife asks.

"Because I hid it so well no one could find it."

"Where?" Waugh asks.

"Clean and tidy with all the other tools in the barn."

"Is it still there?"

"Course. I told you: he's bluffing."

"He said there was more than one clue," Pauline says. She looks deeply unhappy.

"Quit whinging," Boon snaps at her. "It's all a bluff. I don't believe a single word of it. He can't have any evidence. Everyone's kept mum. And James is such a pathetic widower it makes everyone cry." Boon laughs, pounding Waugh approvingly on the shoulder.

No one else finds it funny. Everyone makes long faces. Pauline and Waugh exchange a sobering look. Pauline is quite pale.

"You'll have it all behind you soon enough," Boon tells her comfortingly. "You'll be married before you can even see the baby."

"What if what he says is true?" Pauline asks. "If he has the murderer by tomorrow?"

"He won't. There are four of us, all covering and protecting each other. How can he prove anything? No, don't worry. The gentlemen from London will leave and our constabulary is much too stupid. But we should still be careful. Best you don't show up here for a while, James. Go on back home." Boon gives Waugh a comradely clap on the shoulder.

Waugh nods and gets up.

"Let's arrest them," Inspector Schofield whispers beside me, reaching for his weapon.

"No! We will retreat, Inspector. Come!" I pull him away from the window, around the corner of rhe house.

We press ourselves flat against the wall of the house when the door opens. James Waugh gives his pregnant Pauline a lingering hug. Then he climbs up on his horse and rides away.

"Jinx!" Alistair Boon calls into the darkness for his dog. "Jinx, come here!" A soft whimper in response.

"Let's get out of here," I whisper to the Inspector. We flit from tree to tree back to the meadow, and from there into the woods and over the hill, on the other side of which Inspector Schofield's son is waiting with the wagon.

"We should have taken them into custody!" Schofield complains.

"There are two of us and four of them, Inspector," I reply. "And with what would you cart them off? We have no vehicle. In any event, it would be best if we had proof."

"Or a confession. I will arrest the four of them tomorrow morning and have them questioned."

"Good. Agreed. Dr Watson and I will be present for the interview."

*****

"So it's a conspiracy. But who killed the woman?" Watson asks.

"We don't know yet. My money is on Boon and Waugh. We'll know more tomorrow."

"Today, Holmes, today." Watson grins.

It is long past midnight. We have already had relations. It was exciting and intoxicating in the wake of the evening's thrilling investigation, so close to the apprehension of the murderer, with the backdrop of these new facts and the joyous anticipation of the coming day. The night was far advanced when we returned home, the Waltons already asleep. We ascended to the room beneath the eaves and lay down in my bed, naked. There, we made love. Quietly, so as not to be heard, but freely and unabashedly. I did what John asked of me. I was inside him. Thoroughly and at length. 

We performed the actual act off the bed, as our movements transferred to the bedstead and from there to the wooden floor. My Doctor stabilised himself by holding fast to the ceiling beam while I moved inside him, stirred by my passion. My hands stroked the raw wood, then John's skin, both aroused and irritated by the difference in the textures, the strange roughness and the warm softness. Overwhelmed by the unrestrained lust in my loins. 

We did not lie together in the bed again until the very end, when I could stand it no longer. There, I slid deep into John and held him pressed tightly against me while he bit the pillow in order not to make any noise. I licked the skin behind his ear, utterly lost to my ecstasy, breathing in the spicy scent of his hot body, his unbridled lust. I slipped my tongue into his ear and thrust it in at the same time as I penetrated him with my prick, all the way, deep, in every possible place, filling him up. I felt the tremors in his body and in mine, felt the storm as it was born deep within us and whipped through our bodies with its strong gusts. I felt the contractions of John's muscles deep inside, felt his hot seed well up into my hand, and my reason was washed away by a surge of lava. I moaned, 'John,' at the climax of my rapture. Watson charges me for it with mild reproach when we have caught our breath and are exchanging soft caresses.

John separates from me gently after a while, gives me one more loving kiss, then gets up. He goes to the door and unbars it. It will be morning soon, and Mrs Walton will bring the toilet-water. John goes to lie down in his own bed. I turn over and close my eyes. I am so replete and content that I can scarecely comprehend it.

*****

Of course James Waugh flat out lied to my face. Him having no idea what chaste-tree berries are, my foot! He is not as naïve as he pretends to be. He knows the herb quite well. His wife took the powder for her monthly pains. She did not season anything with it; she prepared it for herself in the kitchen. Waugh lied. It was the perfect opportunity to do so when I held the pepper under his nose, he confesses. He is sitting mutinously in the interrogation room of the Sussex Constabulary. No grieving widower any more. He is in full possession of his masculine strengths. Pauline Boon is carrying his child. Dr Watson confirms her pregnancy following a short consultation. And they both freely admit it. Pregnancy is no crime. Not even if the child is conceived out of wedlock. In contrast to murder.

Inspector Schofield has had all four of them arrested: James Waugh, Alistar Boon and his wife, and Pauline Boon. They all deny having anything to do with the murder, only admitting to the unplanned pregnancy.

But we now have proof, Watson and I and the Sussex police.


	9. The Star

After the Boons' arrest, Inspector Schofield, Watson and I searched their house. It's something I am good at. I know how the criminal mind works. If there is something to find, I will find it. It was scarcely a matter of seconds to recognise that there was something off with the drawer of the dresser. And it was immediately clear what that was: it was too shallow. I pulled it out and reached behind it into the depths of the commode, found the small wooden box and pulled it out. It contained a few pieces of jewellery. And a contract. A simple, informal piece of writing which was still a valid contract in the eyes of the law. It was signed by both of them: Alistair Boon and James Waugh and set out the property situation between the two families, should Pauline Boon and James Waugh marry.

In it, James Waugh agrees to join all of his worldly possessions – including those intended for womanly uses – to those of the Boons following his marriage to Alistair Boon's sister, Pauline Boon, as a gesture of atonement and compensation. In return, the Boon family agrees in perpetuity to forget all injustices of the past.

The surprising thing about the document is that it is dated four years earlier.

*****

Pauline Boon cries when I present her with the document.

"You're the victim," I tell her. "How much longer will you allow yourself to be subjected to this? You're carrying a child!"

She cries. She does not say anything, she simply cries. She is exhausted in the wake of the excitement of the arrest and all the questions. She is probably also sick from the pregnancy. She is quite pale.

"You were supposed to marry James Waugh four and a half years ago, following the death of his first wife. Why didn't you?"

She sniffles but doesn't answer.

"Miss Boon. You will bear your child in gaol and it will be taken from you," Inspector Schofield presses. "Speak now. You did not kill anyone. You will only receive a mild punishment for being accessory after the fact if you confess. Think of your child!"

Pauline Boon cries some more. We wait. She blows her nose, wipes away the tears. Then she says, her voice thick, "I love him."

I must confess, I feel sorry for the woman and her weakness. And yet I redouble quite sternly, "Why, then, did you not marry him four and a half years ago?"

She starts to cry again.

"Your brother and James Waugh made the decision, didn't they? With no regard for you or your feelings."

She nods, sobbing in a heart-wrenching manner.

"It was greed," I say, even as fury and dismay rise in me.

It was clear to me what happened from the moment I saw the document. But Pauline's nod is the final proof that my theory is correct. And here, now, is the feeling that sometimes comes over me when the culprits' evil deeds are spread out before me, becoming visible in their awful clarity. Bitterness and anger at what people do to other people. It is a brief sensation that I shove aside in order not to dilute the lucidity of the insight. But it overcomes me now, as the woman nods and with that feeble gesture cracks open everything that lay heretofore hidden. And at the same time, in the same moment, an unbridled joy wells up within me at having seen through the offenders and solved the case.

Watson's eyes find mine in this moment of high emotion, and our gazes meet over the woman's head, across the interrogation chamber. Notwithstanding the presence of the Inspector and another officer who is guarding the door. We look at each other and I see in Watson's eyes that he understands. His eyes widen briefly in surprise, his lips part just a crack as he inhales deeply. Then a cascade of emotions explodes in that deep, beautiful grey. Admiration, respect, love. For me. And I cannot help but recall for a fraction of a second that I will soon share breathless, hidden secrets with him which surpass everything I have ever known before. It is nothing but a flash, before I turn once again to Pauline Boon. My voice is low now, and I am pensive as I expand upon what I know and have deduced.

"James Waugh and Alistair Boon wanted more. More money. And the opportunity more or less presented itself. A widower with two children. Waugh put out feelers for a rich woman who would bring in a dowry. The queer, unsocial, unpopular lady from Birmingham was more or less the ideal candidate. You, Miss Boon, could wait. It was all about the money. They told you the couple of years would be worth it, that you could marry your James later and be rich, I presume. 

"It was planned from the start to kill Waugh's wife. When the time was ripe. Not so soon that it would send up a red flag. Your pregnancy, Miss Boon, was the catalyst. The catalyst of a deed that was nothing short of monstrous in its intention and design. Monstrous!"

She is bawling now, bawling snot and water. She presses her filthy handkerchief to her face.

"Do you know," she sobs, "what it's like to be poor, always just barely managing to get what you need, and sometimes not even that? Nothing but working and working until you keel over and it's still not enough? Do you know what that's like? And now the babe..."

"No, I don't know what it's like. But it does not justify murder. Never. Who killed Waugh's wife, Miss Boon?" I ask.

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. And I know it too. It was your brother and James Waugh, wasn't it? Can you ride Waugh's stallion, the one standing in your paddock, Miss Boon?"

"Yes," she whispers.

"I thought as much. Mrs Waugh broke him in, he accepts women but threw your brother. You rode him to the field and rounded up the sheep while your brother and Waugh took a detour to Waugh's farm and killed his wife. Your brother's gelding was behind the house. We have proof. Then the men returned and took the sheep to be shorn while you and the dog went home. Is that what happened?"

She shakes her head.

"No. It was just my brother. James couldn't do it. He stayed with me and we rounded up the sheep together. Then Alistair came back with the bloody hoe..." Her voice falters.

"And then?"

"He said, 'It's done. She's gone.' But he didn't say what it was he'd done. I didn't know he'd thrown her in the cess pit. I didn't know until she was found. I didn't dare ask, I was just happy she was gone."

"But Waugh knew, because of the cess pit?"

"I don't know. I think so."

"So your brother came back with the bloody hoe."

"Yes. He gave it to me and said I should take it home with me, wash it thoroughly and put it in the barn with the other tools."

"Which you did."

"Yes. I took the dog and the hoe and did as he bade me."

"That is accessory to murder, Miss Boon."

"I know." She weeps some more.

"The contract speaks of compensation. It refers to some injustice which was done to the Boons. Tell us what that means."

She thinks about it, blows her nose. She has fallen into a story-telling attitude, which is often observed in guilty parties. Once it has been initiated, the information springs forth unimpeded, perhaps an unconscious function of the brain and the psyche. Easing the conscience as quickly as possible. The culprits become calmer and release themselves from their own burdens. It is a rare villain who is so fiendish and heartless that he intends evil right to the end. Only the most dastardly never show remorse. Miss Boon is not one of them.

"Our father and his brother built a farm with the help of our grandfather. Alistair and I were still quite small. But the property burnt down. Our mother was killed. Everything was destroyed, all of our possessions. Many of the animals died too. The fire was caused by the portable forge, whose flue hadn't been cleaned properly. Old Mr Waugh – James' father – had borrowed it and used it, then returned it to the barn without removing all of the embers. A spark set off the whole farm. We had no money. Father sold some land and was able to use the proceeds to purchase the old, run-down house we live in now. Waugh was acquitted, even though our father kept trying to have him charged. That lost us even more money and land."

"Amazing," Watson interjects. "The two sons appear quite friendly now."

"No, they are not friends," Pauline says. "James isn't like his father. He would always help us. That's how I fell in love with him. My brother approached Waugh at some point because he saw an opportunity to overcome our poverty through the bonds of matrimony. Alistair isn't blinded by hatred the way our father was. He wants to make a way for his four little ones. And he's willing to go to any lengths to achieve that."

*****

My Doctor is reflective. As am I. We have taken the dog with us from the Boons' farm. Jinx is obedient and lies at Watson's feet. The Waltons will take care of her as long as necessary. Neighbours have taken on the Waughs' and Boons' sheep and horses for the time being. Schofield had the two Boon women escorted home in the evening as the children needed tending. The two men remain under detainment. Pauline's confession, our evidence, and the conversation which the Inspector and I overheard and gave in deposition are sufficient to convict them.

Inspector Schofield has invited the Doctor and me to dinner tomorrow evening and we have accepted. But we are not in the mood for company tonight. We are seated on the wooden bench outside the cottage, as has become our habit. Matt Walton and his wife have retired for the night. Contrary to the usual procedure, they sat with us at the table tonight, in the kitchen, and ate with us. Listened to our tale and posed questions. Both of them pale and horrified. Too much has happened. The shock, disbelief, and grief are great in the affected village and its neighbours, where the news has spread like wildfire. 

Watson and I took a short walk with the dog, then settled on the bench. We lean against each other as we nearly always do when we are alone, the sun-warmed wall at our backs. We are both attending to our own thoughts, smoking our pipes in silence. We have the leisure to do so for the first time in quite a while.

I am still in turmoil from all the facts, secrets, and chasms we have laid bare. It concerns me how easily four people believed they could get away with such a deed without being discovered. But I also know, only too well, how rarely murders are solved. Even in London it is not common, in spite of the Yard's specialists. It must be much worse in the countryside. They had bad luck, these four, that my Doctor and I were present.

"Satisfied, Holmes?" Watson asks.

"Yes."

Yes, I am satisfied. Despite the presence of the dizzying emptiness that opens up when a thing one has been working on intensively suddenly disappears. Along with the pride and joy of having put the puzzle together and solved the task. The recognition and shy gratitude of the people here. And John. The man at my side. This closeness. I can feel him, smell him. 

Yes, I am satisfied. More than that. Much more. I know that I will love John with my whole body, from the bottom of my soul and with all my senses. Soon. Night has fallen over the villages, spreading out its myriad stars over all these people who will be slow to find sleep after the excitement of the day. But things will quiet down eventually. And in the darkness of the attic room, time and space will open for us, for each other. John and me.

"I am happy, Doctor," I confess.

"Enjoy it, my friend. Happiness is as fleeting as a shooting star."

"Sometimes; but sometimes it may happen that a star falls into one's lap."

John turns his head and smiles at me with his familiar grey eyes.

"Perhaps. Sometimes," he muses.

"I believe it has happened to me, Watson," I say, and lean so close to his ear that my lips touch it. "His name is John Watson."


End file.
